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Thursday, September 30, 2010

This morning I rearranged some furniture and set up tables in the dining area for an office area so that I can spread all my art work out and have enough working space to create an inventory, mostly just enough for November. I hope that I sell a lot because I don't need to take a lot of the actual product with me, only what I can take with me electronically to produce as I need it.

All week I've been working on locating materials for the fund raising project at work in November, and have decided on which images that I will include to sell. There are so many, I just hope that I choose the ones that will sell. I have quite a bit of custom note paper that I have left over and have packaged up. Now I have to decide on what to charge. Everyone that sees the art work thinks that it is good, but the proof is if they are willing to buy it. There are different series, clowns, dolls, scotties, landscapes, fairies, southwestern and Scottish themed subjects. I may, if I have time, create a kids coloring book or a themed calendar. Now the hard part, I have to remember how to use Adobe Photo Shop, and get my CorelDRAW X3 set up on my laptop. I used to have it on my desktop but we evidently didn't get it transferred over after that one crashed.

Just some samples!

Yesterday when I got home my neighbor was having her palm trees trimmed. Angel was not happy. I guess all the noise scared her and she kept barking to let them know.

That's one job that I don't think that I would ever attempt. They were using chainsaws. Fortunately I don't have anything like that has to be done. Most of the yard work I can do but will still get someone else to do it for me.

Tomorrow will probably be spent on re-teaching myself Photoshop and Corel. I am extremely challenged when it comes to these computer programs. I sure hope it all comes back once I go over it all.

I haven't even had time to read the blogs that I follow, so I think that I will do that now to catch up. I hope that you all have a great weekend. Take care and stay safe but most of all have some fun.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

After giving Angel her bath this morning, I was off to church. (She smells so good now.) During pastor's sermon, I decided to add a couple minor things to the painting, so I guess it's not quite finished. It is close though.

The men at our church had a barbeque instead of the October Fest that they usually have. (This year at that time we are having our 50th anniversary celebration.) There is always a raffle. It's a fund raiser to support the things that they do around the church. There was a big turnout, with another church group that uses our building for their services. The food was good and everyone had a good time catching up with people that go to another service. There was even a bounce house for the kids and a local Christian band. (didn't get a picture or the band and several pictures didn't turn out)

Pastor's son, Spearman won $10.00.

After church I visited an art gallery in Fair Oaks. It's a Co-Op operated by artists. I visited awhile and was given some leads on other artists that do note cards and prints. I called a couple of people and got some good information as to resources for paper and mats. I'll check those out later this week.

Not much else happening around here. I'll just keep doing what I have to do, one step at a time. Every day is a little bit closer. I try not to think too far ahead or I'll go crazy. Just focus on the task at hand. It will be here soon. In the meantime keep safe and enjoy each moment.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Today, off we went in search of clear bags for note cards and prints, Mel of Sweet Scenes & Daydreams suggested a resource in yesterdays comment. Thank you Mel. I also checked Utrecht Art Supplies in Sacramento.(utrechart.com) There are stores through out California and of course on line too. They had "Krystal Seal" Self Sealing Art, Print & Photo Bags. There are 25 in each package. The 5" x 7" was $5.29 and the 8" x 10" was $6.79. Since I like instant gratification and tend to purchase from a store rather than online when ever I can, I bought 2 packages of each size. I also went to several places to try to find paper stock for the prints. I have the stock for the note cards, but have figure out how to set up my new printer to print them. I will also need to get some mat board for display purposes. I intend on only selling the prints. I priced the precut mats, but since I have a mat cutter already I might as well cut them myself. It has been a long while since I have cut mats, so I will have to practice.

I do believe that I have finally finished the BIG ONE. I will have to live with it for a few days to be sure. Now I have to figure out how to get it to church. I don't know if I can get it into my van. You can click on the picture to make it larger. It's title is "Resurrection".

That took up most of the day, although I did some work on the spare bedroom. With this project for the Talent Showcase, it will tell me what I will need to keep for when I am out there on the road. I plan on supplementing my retirement income with selling my art work as well as doing custom work as well. Social Security only goes so far.

Thank you all for your comments and compliments. In answer to Barbara, "natural talent" is relevant, I guess that you can say it runs in the family. I have seen some drawings that my mother did, but she never went farther than a few sketches. I did major in Fine Arts in college and taught high school art and drafting in Chicago IL and Mesa AZ for a few years. I haven't taught for over ten years. Since then I have taken a few classes in acrylic and oil, but mostly teaching myself watercolor. I have a lot to learn, that's another reason why I want to RV full time, to have the time to continue to paint and improve my craft.

I want to thank my new followers and all the rest too for your interest and comments I appreciate each and every one. I hope that you all have a wonderful week.

Friday, September 24, 2010

It's been a while since my last post, just couldn't get into it this week. It has been a couple of long weeks. I know, a four day work week shouldn't be that way, but it is still 40 hours. I got used to a couple of three day work weeks, only 30 hours and 10 hours of vacation. I have two more of those coming up, YEA!

Today I took a bunch of stuff over to Cal Expo here in Sacramento for their E-Waste collection. I am so glad that I could get rid of it responsibly. I am still going through my artwork and craft supplies. I have come to the conclusion that I work better when I am under a bit of pressure.

I may have mentioned this before, but I have learned more about the "Talent Showcase" that we will have at work on November 17th. It is for those of us in Customer Service that have crafts or hobbies that we can sell. It will be a fundraiser for one of our charities. We donate 20% of what we sell, unless it bakery stuff, then it's 30%. I have no idea how many are participating, because we have to do it on our own time. I requested 4 hours of vacation time. Now I have to figure out how I can get enough inventory to make it worth my while. I think that I will make limited prints, and also note cards a a reasonable price. I also need to find a supplier for cellophane envelopes for packaging as well as watercolor paper to put through the printer.

These are some of my series of Scotties. I used to have two Scotties, Haggis and Nessie, both are gone but will never be forgotten. Now I have Angel and love her just as much.

These are a few of my fairies and a seascape.

It looks like I have my work cut out for me. All this and still more to purge and sort. Sometimes I think that I won't get it all done. The closer it gets, the faster time flies. There is so much to do.

I stopped by an auction house today to ask what types of things are selling. They say not much of anything except gold and silver. I don't have any of that, so I guess I will hang on to my Hummel Bookworms for a while.

The rest of the weekend I will work on making prints and note cards and maybe even on the "big one". I want to finish it before our church's 50th anniversary in October. When it is finished I'll post a final picture.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Friday......I'm still working on the big one. I do a little bit at time, then live with it while. I still think that there is something more that I want it to say, but haven't figured out how I want to say it. Time will take care of it. In the mean time I need to get out to work on other paintings. I also did a bit of yard work. I know, I've said it before, I certainly won't miss the yard work. I only do it because I have to and can't afford to have someone do it for me.

Saturday......Did some more sorting of photos. I have most of them now in one place.

It sure is taking a long time, another five hours this morning. I decided to sort them by families first. There are four siblings. My oldest brother who lives in Sitka Alaska and has a son and daughter who both live in Arizona. My sister is the one that lives in Albuquerque NM and may do this with me, no kids. If she does, we will share what I keep for myself and those I will try to get scanned on to CD's. My youngest brother passed away several years ago, so I will put together a package to send to one of his kids to disperse. I also have some of my friends and their families. The rest of the photos are those of my parents, grandparents,other family members, Aunts,Uncles, cousins and their friends. Although some of those may be of family members still in Scotland. I would love to find out who they all are. Of course there are my four children and their families. I made a dent it it today. I also took apart some albums and have several scrapbooks. I will need to find out if the kids want them. I'm done for today.

I decided to go to another RV show over at Cal Expo and of course I took Angel.

You all know how much she likes her rides. I didn't go in too many this time. I just wanted to see what's out there and ask more questions. There a a lot of nice RV's out there. I have a wish list for what I want in an RV. Some things are needs and some are would like to have. When the time comes I'll be happy if I get 80% of what's on the list. Most of the time there I shared with someone that I met all about my plans to RV fulltime. The next big RV show with vendors won't be until next Spring. Hopefully there may be some workshops to attend.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Still going through the pictures, the ones that I have. I am also getting more in emails from a cousin back in Ohio with unidentified people in photos that she has. So far I'm not able to tell her who they are. She also sends them to my older brother. He remembers more than I do, so maybe he can help her more. I think that she sent one that is my maternal grandmother, who died before I was two. I am glad that she sent that one because I have a memory of her when I was one year old that no one else remembers. It's really interesting to get the stories of our ancestors, since the previous generation rarely talked about things that were going on from relationships to military service. Now some of those stories are coming out in the open.

Started cleaning the yard, Three huge black trash bags filled with just leaves. Straightened much of the SUFF in the shed. My son still has tools in there and there is a lot of camping equipment. There is are five HUGE containers of Christmas decorations. Believe it or not, I would use almost all of it.

I have really got to get moving on clearing out the spare bedroom. My middle daughter is planning on moving back here to Sacramento at the end of the year with her three kids. The plan is to move in with me for a few months to help me pay down my mortgage to something that she can handle. Then she can afford to live here. There just isn't any where in Sacramento where she can rent a house with her income. This would be the next best thing. What am I thinking of? Three kids? Three reasons to get out of the house and walk or whatever. This is going to prove interesting. Wish us all luck, we are certainly going to need it.

The deer are gone. Steve says that his boys have been looking forward to having them in their yard at Christmas. I am so glad that have found a good home.

This week and next week, I actually have to work all four days. Then another two three day work week, yea, and so it goes for the rest of the year. I had a lot of vacation time that I couldn't get confirmed, so I just requested Thursdays and Mondays that were available. You all know how I really like short work weeks. I will try to use those days to work on the house and purge, purge, purge.

That's about all for today, I didn't even think to take pictures of the deer

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Yesterday morning right after breakfast, I decided to go out to the shed to set aside the deer for Steve to pick up, three of them.

While I was out there I also went through the containers that have all the Christmas decorations in them. I wanted keep some of it separate for when I start RVing. I will probably have to keep less once I know what kind of space that I will have available. The rest I will let my daughter have. I am starting a stack of stuff that I will toss. Our city will give us three pick ups per year at no charge.

I came inside around 10 am and started looking for a baby picture for some kind of team building activity at work. I finally found one, but in the meantime I started trying to identify the people in the pictures. I have found so many of my relatives that I don't who they are, although I think my mom wrote some names on some of them. A lot of them had dates and places and "me and so and so" on them, but not who "me" is. Sure wish my sister were here to help with the pictures. I went through only half of them in the box, that took about four hours. This is only one box, lots more are waiting for me. I guess that I had better start sorting them too so that I can give them to the rest of the family or whoever wants them. I even found some letters that I had written to my parents over 40 years ago and a scrapbook with greeting cards to a cousin and some for my sister when they were babies, (both are older than me).

I was going to cut the grass but it was too wet since the sprinklers came on this morning, so it will have to be done tomorrow.

This morning I did get out there to get the grass cut. It must have been at least 10 to 12 inches tall. I had to use the weed eater on it. I also started to rake all the leaves in the back yard. I still have to bag them and get them into trash. I would watch Angel when she would go out there as it seemed to hurt her feet. Some of the leaves were from a holly tree. I guess that it was about time I got them cleaned up.

I still haven't figured out what to do back there to make it low maintenance, but still not spend too much money. There is a lot that I can do or would like to do if I were still staying here, even putting all grass out there I would have to prepare the ground first.$$$ I guess that I will have to get an estimate.

It started to get warm so I put the rest off until later. I then went to visit with Gypsy for a while. Time just flies, we seem to have so much to talk about. She was telling me about her experiences as a campground host. I thought that I might want to do that too, but was wondering about doing it solo. I guess that it depends on what the duties would be and what I would do if I had any problems, one more thing to think about when it gets closer.

I hope that I haven't bored you with my ramblings, so thanks for visiting

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Three more days gone. There is just nothing interesting that happens at work. The only thing that was different is that I had to put in my shift bid for the next quarter. I try to get an early 4/10 shift like a have now. I'll find out what it will be when I go back to work next week.

I'm going to have to get more work done here at home. I have some animated deer that need to find a new home, especially before Christmas. One of my team mates may come get them this weekend. It is so hard to get motivated to get rid of the stuff. I don't want to just toss things that are still usable. The park that I live in does not allow yard sales except the community yard sale once a year in June. I'm not sure I want to do Craig's List or eBay. The hardest thing to do is to make up my mind, so I end up doing nothing.

I have been reading one of four books that Gypsy gave me. The first one is RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy by Sharlene "Charlie" Minshall. Can I call that research? I hope that I will be able to able to travel that easily as a solo. She has had some interesting travels and experiences.

Last night, it's a good thing that my next door neighbor suggested that I bring the "big" painting inside. It actually rained last night. That is one of the things that I have to work on this weekend, as well as catch up on the yard work. The grass and vines keeps growing and growing and growing. It's one thing that I won't miss. I love gardens, but not working in them. I have really got a lot of work to do that I don't want to do, but it will cost too much to have some one else do it, not in the budget.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Slept in until 5am, I probably could have stayed in bed longer as it was nice and cool with the window open and a fan on, but I wanted to go somewhere, anywhere today. I needed to do a bit of laundry before I left. While that was going, I had a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries. That is something I don't have very often since my surgery (not enough protein), but it was so good.

With the laundry done and breakfast out of the way, as soon as I got dressed, Angel knew something was up. She was ready and prancing all over the place. "Can I go?--Can I go?" She sure does like to go for rides. So off we went, first to get gas and then to Village RV just off I80 and Auburn. It's owned by Camping World. The salesman took us in a golf cart to look at a couple 5vers and Class A's. He was nice and tried to steer me towards rigs that might work for me. I usually have a tall order for what I'm looking for, which includes my "wish list", and cost as well as the time frame that I will have to work with. One thing that I have to start doing is to figure out what I can take with and how much it weighs.

Before going home, I wanted to find an area near the American River where I can paint. I took Angel for a short walk along the bike trail. It sure was crowded, bikes (slow and fast), walkers (with and without dogs), and horseback riders. Too much for me to deal with today.

This is just the path that leads to the trail from the parking lot. I'll have to check it out another day. The American River Parkway is 23 miles of American River shoreline set aside for public use. The river is also used by boaters (inflatable, canoes and kayaks). There are areas to swim in, but it can be dangerous with cold, very cold water and fast flowing water. The river flows out of the Sierras down to the Sacramento River and then eventually ends up in San Francisco Bay and then to the Pacific Ocean. Here's a few pictures of the river. If you click on the first one you can see the river near the back of the picture.

There are about 5,000 acres of land in the Parkway. Between the river and homes there is a lot of wildlife. Today I only saw three wild turkeys. They were on the side of the road, but were in the shade. If you look close you can see one of them, In the past I have seen deer , coyote, raccoons and snakes in addition to all the birds, squirrels and other little creatures.

From there I took Angel to the dog park. It was around noon so there were only two other little dogs there. People usually go earlier in the day, but mostly in the evening. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out good so I won't bore you with them. It is new to the city this year, with three areas (for large dogs, small dogs and an area for both). It is a nice park with water and a lot of room for the dogs to run or chase balls. There is a playground nearby for kids, so you can bring the two legged and the four legged kids at the same time. The park is also near the river and the bike trail goes through it. Needles to say it is a very popular place all year round.

We finally got home and I actually cooked. I made an onion, garlic, mushroom and cream sauce to put over spaghetti squash instead of pasta. I also added some baby peas. It was really very good. I have to cook more often, It's usually just a salad or something that I just throw together.

That's about it for today. Now I just have to get the mind set that I have to go to work tomorrow. Oh well, one day closer.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Here it is Saturday night already. I didn't do too much of anything on Friday other than work on a painting for Gypsy.

Today I did some grocery shopping and worked on the big painting. I think that I am getting close to finishing it. i will need to "live" with it a while before I finalize it. When I finish it I'll post a picture.

I'm waiting on a call from my son. He is going to teach me how to down load some tunes on my new MP3 player (my BD present to me). I got it to down load audio books on to it. He tried doing it with the Winamp program on my laptop. I can download to the computer, but not from the computer to the MP3 player (incompatible). He'll try later with a different program.

It is now Sunday afternoon. I had a problem with my new wireless mouse, Ted set the setting as high as it would go, but that didn't work too well. It acted like the one I have at work when there was dust under the ball. No ball to clean, so I didn't know how to fix it, and in addition the touch pad wouldn't work. Now that's when I got frustrated. Today I took the lap top in to have the Geek Squad look at it. Fortunately it was an easy fix. He blew some air where the optic light is, and that worked. He also set the setting back down to a normal setting. One down, the other was even easier. There is a light on the top of the keyboard to push when you want to turn off the touch pad. I somehow had hit it and turned off the touch pad. (I didn't know about it and Ted didn't know it was there either.) Now I know and I also bought a cleaning kit with an aerosol can of air to clean the keys and the mouse when it happens again. Then on the way home I stopped at Target where I picked up 4 movies for $5.00. Don't you just love those multi-packs.

Linda (the art teacher) came over to give me some tips on my painting. There's a lot to think about. I added some more to it, but there's a little more to do. So I'm getting close.

Not sure what tomorrow will bring. I'm off tomorrow for the holiday. Then another three day work week. Yea!

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Tuesday night Ted came home so that we could hang out together on my BD, and he actually spent the night here. Angel was really excited that he as here. She of course woke him up early in the morning. LOL When we finally got up and had breakfast, we tried to decide what we wanted to do and ended up going out to Camping World to see if they had an outside shower for his annual camping trip to Pismo Beach.with his truck club. They didn't have it, so it turned into mission of searching the other camping and sports stores. No luck, so he gave up.

He took me out to MIMI's for lunch. He had a pasta dish and I had a salad with salmon. That's my lunch for today. We both enjoyed our meal. Then we went to Fry's Electronics to check out a smaller and lighter weight printer. I wasn't planning on buying one, but they had a really good deal on a Cannon NX510 printer, scanner that was also WiFi, When we got home, he installed it for me. The best part is that he tamed the spaghetti bowl of wires that has been bugging me. Thank you Ted!

All throughout the day I kept getting Birthday wishes from all over the country, by phone, bloggers and Facebook. I am so blessed to have so many family and friends. Thank you all for your birthday wishes.

While working on the printer he made plans with our pastor's wife, Kyle to go there for dinner. Pastor Steve's BD is on the 6th, and when Ted is in town, many times we have celebrated our BD's together. That was the case this year too. On the way there, we stopped at the store and got a loaf bread, mushrooms, linguini, some Coho Salmon and prawns, Ted and Kyle made an amazing dinner, mushroom, onion and garlic linguini, grilled home grown zucchini tossed with S&P and olive oil, grilled Salmon and marinated prawns and warm ciabata (spelling ?) bread.

What A Wonderful Spread! The Chefs, Ted and Kyle

Then we topped it all off with an ice cream cake with always lighting candles.

The full effect. Now you can see us.

This is everyone (Ted taking the picture). Their son Spearman is in the front.

All in all, I had a wonderful birthday.

Today when I went to work, I found my cubical decorated with steamer, and they took a picture of Angel off my blog and everyone on the team signed it and then they had it laminated. When I finally retire I won't miss the work, but will miss everyone on my team.

Another picture finished while at work today.

I now have to find more subjects for more paintings. Maybe this weekend I'll be able to do that.